Printing is coming, but Microsoft's Office for iPad still requires O365

Mark Hachman |
April 9, 2014

The Office for iPad team takes to the pages of Reddit to reveal, well, what you won't be able to do with Office for the iPad.

Likewise, the team remained mum on a touch-based suite of Office apps for Windows or Android, although Microsoft demoed the apps last week at its Build conference. "We are part of the broader Office organization and we collaborate with our Office for Windows partners on a daily basis," Han-yi Shaw, the Group Program Manager & Design Manager for Office for iPad, wrote. "We share lots of ideas and application code between the teams -- and it's worth mentioning that Office for iPad could not have been possible without this tight collaboration with our Office for Windows partner teams."

Shweib also noted that, due to app restrictions, it was unlikely that Office Apps, the plug-ins for Office, would make their way to the iPad apps. "Sections 2.7 and 2.8 of Apple's App Store Review Guidelines emphatically state that downloading, installing, or launching any sort of code other than your app's own code is prohibited," he wrote. "I don't know if Apps for Office would be allowed in the iOS App Store."

Other tidbits:

On authorization: "The decision to ship Office for iPad was made before Satya became CEO," Kaberi added. "Steve Ballmer approved the plan to ship Office for iPad."

On the delay: "Since we were designing Office for iPad from a 'blank slate' so to speak, we wanted to take the time to deliver the highest possible quality Office experience that is fully optimized for the iPad," Shaw wrote. "A wise man once said, 'Details matter, it's worth waiting to get it right.' That rings true for how we thought about it."

On OneNote for iOS: "We're continuing to work on updating our iOS clients, and our next iPhone update will be compatible with iOS7," "Avneesh," a product manager for OneNote, wrote.